Thursday, August 22, 2013

Google Claims Responsibility for Virgie UFO

In the August issue of Wired magazine Steven Levy reported that the October 2012 UFO sighting that was captured on film in Virgie, KY was a balloon that was a part of Google's Project Loon. Google publicly unveiled Project Loon, an undertaking to provide low-cost, high-speed internet to remote areas of the world, in June of this year, after what they called a successful pilot run in New Zealand.

The Medicine Show reported the sighting last year when Pike County resident Larry Epling, an amateur astronomer, captured footage of the UFO seen in this region, as well as in Tennessee and Virginia. He described the object as "two parallel lines shining very brightly." Epling's posted his video to YouTube and his story was picked up by local newspapers and television stations.

Elping's 'UFO'

Epling's footage became popular on UFO websites. Theories circulated that he had captured some kind of plasma UFO. Other, more rational, explanations were put forth, including that it was a balloon, but with the sinister motive of spying on US citizens (we're still not sure that isn't the case...more on that in a minute). Other conspiracists believed the object was sampling or creating chemtrails, most likely left behind by the chemicals in airplane exhaust but believed by some to be responsible for everything up to and including mind-control and weather controlling experiments.

The Wired article reported that "The
people in Pike County were witnessing a test of Project Loon, a breathtakingly
ambitious plan to bring the Internet to a huge swath of as-yet-unconnected
humanity — via thousands of solar-powered, high-pressure balloons floating some
60,000 feet above Earth." Adjective-heavy description aside, the balloon in question was said to have stayed in the air for 11 days, traveling as far as Canada.

A Loon Balloon from a press release

Project Loon took it's name from the 'crazy' idea of providing the world with internet access. The idea is that these solar-powered balloons would circle the planet in rings in the stratosphere would provide web access via basketball-sized antennae attached to their home or business.

Isn't this a little late to be claiming responsibility? Rationalists would argue the information came out when the program was highlighted in the Wired article, but Google knows all and sees all, so why wouldn't they clear their throat and let us know what's up in the almost year that's passed since the incident?

A Loon Balloon launch. Doesn't it resemble an, ahemmm, 'raincoat'?

Some conspiracy nuts may say it's because Big Brother Google execs were too busy spending the money from their new classified government contracts to bother. Epling himself isn't quite convinced. He says he has been contacted by other people saying they saw the object he filmed. "My
reports that I've received of this object being seen more than a year ago
doesn't fit with Google's press release that they began that project this year. I
have reports of people who saw something similar to this two years ago. It's
still an unidentified flying object, that
doesn't mean it's from space or aliens or anything else. It just means it's
something that's unidentified."

The Lost Creek researchers are a paranoid bunch by nature, and with a huge corporation like Google assuming astronomers don't know a balloon from a not-balloon, we certainly hope they haven't teamed up with the boys at HAARP and are playing god in the clouds.

Finally, yes, the Lost Creek Medicine Show is hosted by Blogger, who's parent company is Google. That being said, if our posts mysteriously stop and our writer goes missing, direct my family to a good lawyer who's not afraid to take on Corporate America. Less dramatically, here's to them not removing this post lol.